A sailor turned up for a book of maps (5)
I believe the answer is:
atlas
'book of maps' is the definition.
(synonyms)
'a sailor turned up for a' is the wordplay.
'a sailor' becomes 'salt' (salt is a kind of sailor).
'turned up' says the letters should be written backwards.
'for' says to put letters next to each other (I've seen this in other clues).
'salt' reversed gives 'tlas'.
'tlas' put after 'a' is 'ATLAS'.
(Other definitions for atlas that I've seen before include "African mountain range" , "Its architectural name is telamon" , "I carry a huge weight" , "Mythological Titan (involved with the world of maps?)" , "Size of paper once" .)